Trials of Valor Expansion

[Theblaz]

What if there was a sliding scale of the value of CLs?

Like, 1-500 (or whatever) is worth 1/4 of what it was before the update (or whatever), then 501-1000 is worth 1/2, then etc.

I also played EQ for years, and EQ2 and DDO and a few other smaller MMOs, and the problems were always the same: new update, people at the end of the game complained it was too easy to finish. I bet if they didnt neef CLs, a lot of you would already have finished the trials.

I see the devs desire to balance things a bit for leaderboards, but i also totally understand (and agree) that hundreds of CLs have lost so much strength it almost seems pointless.

Personally as i said above, i love the update and have no problem with the changes, but maybe the sliding scale i mentioned would be a good compromise?

[Holly Norton]

Feedback on the changes in relation to then and now. Have a level 60 Warrior and a Level 60 Mage. Warrior was in Legendary, first world, just before the Road to Anderhelm(sp?). Now back to 2nd world on Heroic and struggling.
Mage was on last level of Heroic. Wench needs to go back to training (and she was able to kill Gorgona on Heroic, though with some difficulty) cause she gets killed in record breaking time now. (Run Forrest, RUN!)

I also have a level 20 warrior that is struggling in normal mode, world 2, about half way. The hits on him (20/CL 145) were staggering (reduced to instant wimp), and the speed of play is simply horrendous. It's so slow that I hate playing the character at all, and it's bad enough even with my level 60 characters. It's like watching the sword swing in slow motion. Ugh. Takes way too long to play out the story line now.

[ZorkRefugee]

As far as balancing PVP goes:
It's simple enough to have a setup window when entering a PVP arena: Allow/disallow CLs, Time/Kill limits, minions on/off.
That way players can agree on the rules and minimize (or not) the experience differences.

As for the nerfs, as I mentioned in the feedback forum this seems a bit too much:

A Mage 60, 155 CLs, who had run the whole game on Legendary (challenging, I admit) went from:
Dam 32K --> 17K
Tough 54K --> 41K
Rec 27K --> 8K
Ouch!

The Bounty Hunter is fun, though, thanks guys for that part!

[ezcry4t3d]

First off, Bounty Hunter is very cool, as are the Trials maps. Most of those new graphics are very sweet. Please don't think that my response is negative just because I'm going to harp on the criticisms for longer than I praise.

1. Critical Rating reduction
As such we think that a 20% - 40% critical hit chance is more balanced and fun.

Maybe I will look at the math for gear next because I am tired of playing now. As someone else mentioned, I'm not convinced that getting much above 25% is very feasable but I can't say for sure without doing the math. You've forced warriors into having a lot more Life on Hit on gear and I'm not sure you've accounted for the opportunity cost of that.

2. Champions Level bonus reduction
The Power and Attack Speed bonuses were scaling the damage by a 5x factor in high CL levels, creating a huge discrepancy between new players and veterans.
That discrepancy in power will still exist, but it won't be that big.
We care about balance because very soon we'll introduce Trial of Valor leaderboards, and we want new players to have a fair chance to compete there.

I don't mean to be disrespectful here, but I DON'T CARE about ANY of this. I don't care if CL were giving a huge damage multiplier. I don't care about a leaderboard. I don't care how big the damage discrepancy between veteran and new players is. What I do care about is that I went from having FUN destroying any level I wanted to play on my DPS warrior, or walking through any level I wanted on my exp warrior in roughly about twice the time as the dps war to gain 5x the exp. Log into the new expansion and they both die repeatedly. It has little to do with the damage output vs enemy life ratio and a ton more to do with the 75% nerf to CL Life on Hit (magnified by the 80% nerf to CL AS, no more tanking without stacking LoH on gear) and the 75% nerf to CL Life Regen (goodbye Whirlwind without minions CCs since this is the only viable healing during WW because it's still weak as **** on gear)

So I swapped out numerous Power gems for Vitality gems, further nerfing the **** out of my DPS. And I switched out DPS minions for CC ones, further nerfing my DPS. And then I survived grinding through levels (greatly helped by my dual legacy Stormblades, which others won't have as a crutch) to 70 where I finally replaced a couple pieces of gear and added back over 1k Life on Hit where my character is finally marginally close to being playable like it was before, except now it takes perhaps 3x as long to kill anything and there are certain elites that you can just forget because if they're not dead before they exit CC then I am a goner almost instantly.

We did reduce the monsters power to match the hero nerfs, but it seems that we didn't reduce it enough. Ideally, you shouldn't have felt the nerf.

LOL?



Regarding boss balancing on Trials

I can confirm what someone else said about Broken Dragon's breath. I've said it before and I'll repeat it again. There seems to be two versions of his breath. Since I added over 1k of LoH to gear at 70 I can Frenzy heal through the first one. If I'm unlucky and get the other one though I can watch my life drop to zero over about 2 seconds and I die, every time. When it happens, you just have to keep respawning until you get lucky and don't get the high damage breath in the time it takes you to kill the dragon. (A shield might still work as well, but I didn't try one)

Also, the summoner boss sucks because it constantly runs away. The boss itself has no chance of killing me, but when he runs all over the map and drags me into remaining elite groups that can kill me that's pretty shitty. Just vanish ALL the remaining mobs when the boss appears.

Also, all other map themes are much prefered to underground, although I don't restart them, the load screen is too long for that.

Some people are complaining about EXP gains for grinding CL being nerfed, but I personally don't have enough data yet to comment on that.

[Celestial]

I'm a newbie so take my opinion with a grain of salt but I think that there SHOULD be an extreme discrepancy between a level 70 hero and a level 70 + 1000 CL champion, in fact there should be no contest between them at all.

As someone else suggested have CL ranges based leaderboards and eventually pvp, like a level 30 should not get to fight a level 10 or CL 200.

You can have a series of "weight" classes.
You want to fight in this class, there is a CL cap of X, etc, etc.

I am not super duper high in CL numbers, barely 1/4 to the max but 80% nerf, while I feel bad for those in upper ranges.

Things like critical hits being the normal hits, I agree.

That said, I have tried the new system yet so I don't know how my 100k damage with exp items level 60 mage would fare now.

[vyme]

Messed around with the BH a bit today, and really dug it. Was playing on my Android phone, got to lvl 3, came home and switched to my kindle fire, which included a crash or two before I realized I had to manually update.

Now my class is listed as 'Stranger,' which seems to be a gun & shield thing, and I lost some equipment, including the lightning gun I'd paid for. Not that worried about my $0.99, but curious what's going on.

[ezcry4t3d]

Messed around with the BH a bit today, and really dug it. Was playing on my Android phone, got to lvl 3, came home and switched to my kindle fire, which included a crash or two before I realized I had to manually update.

Now my class is listed as 'Stranger,' which seems to be a gun & shield thing, and I lost some equipment, including the lightning gun I'd paid for. Not that worried about my $0.99, but curious what's going on.

Well, the Expansion is only released on Google Play Android, not on Kindle Fire. So your Fire has no idea what a BH is. You really shouldn't mess around with your expansion upgraded profile on a non-expansion client as it could cause considerable problems.

[Bryce Solomons]

does everyone get a chance to buy the lightning gun once we start a BH? i wouldnt mind paying some $$ as a support offering. I have fully enjoyed my warrior so far so i think that would be the least i can do to support the devs.

[vyme]

Well, the Expansion is only released on Google Play Android, not on Kindle Fire. So your Fire has no idea what a BH is. You really shouldn't mess around with your expansion upgraded profile on a non-expansion client as it could cause considerable problems.

And it has. Shooting bullets out of a sword, for one. But I was able to update to Eternium on my Kindle through the Amazon Store, and it works fine for playing the Trials with my Mage. So it's not exactly 'not released' on Kindle. Just inadvisable, I guess.

EDIT: You actually can only download the latest version (1.2.7 Eternium) via Amazon, so I think as of yesterday it's definitely released. It's still possible I screwed something up by trying to launch the old app before manually updating through Amazon. It auto-updated on my Android on launch, so I assumed the same would happen on my Kindle. Not too worried about it, it was only about an hour or two of play, which I can easily replicate. I just want to make sure it's stable before I start over.

[Edaj Floow]

AMEN to all the high CL players putting their 2 cents in about these NERFS. I just sat & read this whole thread & i'm pretty PISSED, like EZ is (amen to your last post). I'm on an Android so i'm not sure why my game didnt switch to the new update today when i played but i'm glad it didnt by the sounds of it.

Heres MY thoughts, just from reading this thread....I agree COMPLETELY with EZ & the few others pissed about the the "nerfs" & my reason is similar : I'm not a skilled gamer like the majority but i will say, i've player this game RELIGIOUSLY (EVERY SINGLE DAY) for over a year now & i'm only 2 levels from hitting CL500 & have only 167,000ish DPS. I've busted my butt & devoted TONS of time just to get to where i am & FINALLY able to kill mobs easier to get my XP to move quicker. SOOOO,,,,if i gotta go back to barely being able to kill a small mob...F*%k IT....I'M DONE! WHAT A WAIST OF ALL THAT DEVOTED TIME. Why would you TAKE AWAY everything we've worked for?
I play for FUN...its FUN killing fast & easy, a game isnt supposed to STRESS YOU OUT!

I saw 1 of the guys posts said he's GLAD they made it harder because it was "too easy for him" & he was going to quit. Well guess what,,,i bet there are THOUSANDS who feel like ME, to the FOUR that think its too easy. Who would you rather amend the game for?

Why wouldnt you have just added MORE to the current game? Up the skill levels (as someone else mentioned), fix the damn crafting system so you could actually make your own gear, & lessen the damn crafting time (its worthless anyway), add a few more abilities, new dungeons, blah blah blah, etc, tons of options. Instead, you chose to TAKE STUFF AWAY!

[Darkrott]

WOW!!! this update was a mistake. Is it possible to uninstall? Lvl 36 warrior, lvl 86 synergy. Midway through second world on normal difficulty. Duelist ability is useless now! My damage dropped! Enemies aren't weaker, they're stronger than ever, and there is a ludicrous group around every corner!!! Phone starts stalling and lagging and didn't have that problem before the update. I had to stop trying (dying), just to post this. I don't know what its like for champion class(careless) and I'll never know at this difficulty. I'm making 30+ power and experience gear that shouldn't be higher than 20's. High numbers dropped and low numbers are higher. What's the difference? Crafted a 22.3% experience helm and thought "awesome", then realized my base experience stat had gone up too. No difference. Now I have to guess if the new "high" and "low" numbers are good stats or bad. And what about my old gears stats, 2 pages of rares and epics? Idk. Just fix it soon please. I haven't bothered to try the trials yet, not sure if I want to now. Wanted to finish story mode.


P.s.
Add an "auto salvage by rarity" option. Automatically keeps above raritys and sells lowers. And make higher stackable potion slots and less cooldown times for them.

Game is good. Sorry to criticize. Guess that's what it takes though.

[Destro]

Ok, this is getting ridiculous now. My level 16 warrior is getting killed in one hit by the Broken Dragon now whereas he received only a quarter damage earlier while both Shield Block and Sword and Board were up.

Let me reiterate that I don't have a single Champion Level yet. My primary level 58 mage is back grinding in normal mode because heroic is too tough for him now. The biggest disappointments are the nerfs on Life on Hit and Crit Rate/Crit Damage.

[Purplexity]

Contrary to most responses I've read here I'm really enjoying the new release so far(apart from a few niggles). Massive XP and loot gains that were had in the new challenge dungeon got my mage to 70 pretty painlessly.

Trying out the new class and liking it so far, only lvl 18 though so that may change.

Only major gripe is that making lvl 70 rings/necklaces has gone from a the tedious process it was at 60 to a mind numbing series of crafting and selling ENTIRE pages of rings/necks without seeing a single one in the top 10 percentile of stats.

[Chaerimasu]

Ok, this is getting ridiculous now. My level 16 warrior is getting killed in one hit by the Broken Dragon now whereas he received only a quarter damage earlier while both Shield Block and Sword and Board were up.

Let me reiterate that I don't have a single Champion Level yet. My primary level 58 mage is back grinding in normal mode because heroic is too tough for him now. The biggest disappointments are the nerfs on Life on Hit and Crit Rate/Crit Damage.

Broken dragon has always been pretty "broken". Sometimes the fire breath does nothing, other time it kills even the most geared character. If your CL is 0, then life on hit did not get nerfed. Only crit rate has been nerfed, not crit damage.

[Raikyn]

I haven't minded the increase in difficulty so far.
CL 170ish, my level 60 mage could still do normal against lvl 70 monsters easy. Could still do heroic levels, but couldn't do Severed Mountain quick enough( had him down to just under half when trying with lvl 64 mage but still lvl 60 gear )
I haven't yet figured the best way to do CL levels and gems, but ditching attack sp in favour of damage seems to be working a bit better for CL, might use gems/items for attack speed.

The BH seems fun but only just started, up to about lvl17, halfway through act2 just destroying anything at the moment with scatter/rapidfire/heatseeker/piercing/chargedammo